“Listening to clients is key to winning in consumer legal services.
Client needs are changing and changing faster than ever.
Those who don’t listen to clients, will die.
It’s not a benefit. It’s a necessity for survival.”
Director, Law Firm
5 themes have emerged from the 2023 future of client listening research
- Firms are seeking out ways to hear from more clients
- But the resulting data remains disconnected
- There are opportunities for listening earlier in the client journey
- Senior Management are missing out on regular insights
- Active client listening requires firm-wide buy-in
How can your firm keep up?
The results show that professional services firms have started shifting from passive to active client listening. But adopting active client listening is a cultural shift as well as a technical shift, and hence firms are at different stages in the journey. For example:
- Clients are sharing feedback through many different channels – a couple of firms are already using 10 different channels. So if interviews are still your sole source of feedback you’re being left behind.
- If you’re collecting feedback during a matter/project, you’re ahead of the curve, as most firms are still waiting until the work is finished (& hence it’s too late to do anything about the feedback).
- Less than half the firms surveyed are sharing insights from client listening across the firm. As a result, the impact of what clients tell them is limited.
The firms that can discover and respond to client needs quickly, will have a competitive advantage. These results show that this advantage will come from seeking out a broader range of feedback sources and finding ways to keep all that data in one place. If you stopped there, you would still have a single source of truth for your client’s voice – a big step forwards for many firms.
But why stop there? The purpose of client listening is to help them firm learn and respond to client’s evolving needs. This is where automation comes in, turning the growing volume of raw data into actionable insights that can be accessed across your firm in real-time. This is where MyCustomerLens comes in. It makes it easy for forward-looking firms to collect, analyse and report on feedback in real-time.